Tell Me How This Ends: A BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick

Product Information

Translating language, experience, bodies across space and time, thought and culture—Luiselli wants us to join in this work. Tell Me How It Ends calls for a wholesale reimagining of both the forces that have shaped contemporary immigration into the United States as well as the way many Americans, disconnected from fact, picture it. It calls, moreover, for action.” —Brooklyn Magazine Although I have long since outgrown YA as a genre, I would have absolutely adored this novel when I was a teenager; it is fun, has a wonderful sense of adventure, and is really a beautiful study of how the main character—Iris—grows. We go along her journey and learn about her world, captivated by the personalities she meets along the way! Marin, Myst, and Kalaya were all wonderful (although the amount of times my eyes mixed up Marin and Myst is a higher count than I can admit). it was difficult for me, personally, to read something that revolved so heavily around the white protagonist in so many different ways, especially to the point that she thought she was owed an explanation about the queen’s scapegoating of their behaviour and secrets that genuinely put their lives in danger. on top of this, iris’ continual oscillation between whether or not the queen was “right” really just did not sit right with me. Sometimes you stumble upon books that just feel like going home. Tell me how it ends was like that to me. It’s the perfect mix between cozy fantasy and heist fantasy, with high stakes.

Keeping the spoilers to a minimum, but I am unable to write this review without talking about the ending and the book on a whole. Tell Me How It Ends is supposed to be a re-imagining of Tangled, and during the initial chapters, this was largely evident. I was able to find a ton of similarities between the two narratives and loved the way that a lot of the author’s creative takes came through. I found the protagonist to be incredibly interesting—I’ve never read anything with a Tarot reader at the forefront—and so I was immediately intrigued to see how it would pan out. Henrietta’s new position may not be everyone’s dream job, but it’s perfect for her-with no team building exercises or team targets. All she has to do is transcribe the memories of terminally ill patients and turn them into “Life Story books” which they can leave to their loved ones upon their passing. No time to get too attached, or disappointed. As far as the writing style is concerned, it took me a while to get used to it, mainly because I had a hard time following some sentences, but after a few chapters it became very easy and I liked the banter between the various characters and the descriptions of scenes and places. Valeria Luiselli’s account of discussions with undocumented children from Latin America facing deportation from the U.S. is a vital book.” —Vol. 1 Booklyn

In the warrens of New York City’s federal immigration court, an adolescent boy from Honduras confronts a thoroughly confused immigration bureaucracy with the help of his translator, who is the author of this book. He is just one of thousands of immigrant children longing for permanence in this country, but we get to see him up close. With Valeria Luiselli as our guide, we navigate the corridors of a system that tries and fails to reconcile America’s long-standing welcome of the poor, the terrorized, and the adventurous with its current fear and mistrust of immigrants. In the frightening year of 2017 this is a most necessary book, and a unique one, from a writer whose clear-eyed intelligence and marvelous literary imagination make every one of her narratives a compelling read.” —Alma Guillermoprieto Still, it’s a story that should please readers who love a heartwarming story with a quirky protagonist, and it’s available now! I found the characters, the writing, and the plot (despite its darker undertones) quite charming. It was a little like being along the ride on a road trip, privy to the ways that exceptional circumstances caused Iris and Marin (and, later, others) to bond. No matter what you come to the book looking for--an adventure, the representation, the themes--what you will stay for is, without a doubt, the characters. They were each unique, and even the ones introduced much later into the narrative had unique characterization.

I absolutely recommend this to everyone looking for a cozier fantasy and wanting to sit with delightful characters. The attention to detail and love of the craft is so apparent reading TMHIE, and it is truly an exemplar of what the YA writing craft is meant to be. My favourite thing has to be the inclusion of tarot cards in the book and the way the helped the plot move forward; I know next to nothing about tarot cards, but they are something that has always fascinated me, and I thin the author did a great job at making their presence and the readings smooth. I was afraid it would be to difficult for me to follow, or that I would become very bored if there were too many readings and stuff, but it was actually really nice. The book was originally marketed as a Queer retelling of Disney's Tangled, and I definitely got that vibe. but I feel like it fell short in other aspects: sometimes writing came off clunky and younger for YA but was too mature as a Middle Grade, and the atmosphere and world-building were all surface level. Das Buch hat einen wunderschönen Einband. Leider täuscht dieser über den Inhalt hinweg. Die letzten 10% - 20% des Buches haben die Geschichte gerettet, sonst fand ich das Buch leider enttäuschend. Die Geschichte war sehr vorhersehbar, obwohl sie sich so bemüht hat, geheimnisvoll zu sein. Dazu kommt der Versuch eine sympathische Hauptfigur zu erschaffen. Die gute Dame, Henriette, hat jedoch einen Haufen psychologischer Themen, die dringend professionell aufgearbeitet werden sollten, wenn nicht sogar die eine oder andere schwerwiegendere Diagnose hinzu kommen würde. Sympathisch fand ich sie gar nicht, und dass obwohl ich selbst ein großer Fan von Ordnung, Listen und geordneten Tagesabläufen bin. Extrem gestört hat mich die Wandlung ihres Hundes von schwerst-aggressiv zu Therapiehund. Das ist absolut unrealistisch, vor allem ohne Training, ohne dass sie Großteile ihres Verhaltens ändert. Ich will da gar nicht noch weiter darauf eingehen. Annie, die zweite Hauptfigur, in ihrer exzentrischen Art war mir durchaus sympathisch wie auch andere Nebenfiguren, die wirklich nur am Rande vorkommen. This features Henrietta, who takes up a new job interviewing people at the end of their lives and then turning their life stories into books for their families to keep. One of her clients is Annie, whose sister Kath disappeared, presumed drowned, when they were teenagers. Annie's husband died a couple of years ago, but she seems less troubled about that. Henrietta determines to find out what happened to Kath, and along the way she finds a friend in Annie and reveals some secrets about her own past.Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book for free in exchange for a review and support promoting the book as part of the author’s street team.

Loved the character Henrietta, an Eleanor Rigby of bereavement stories. Such a quirky idea with the lost souls finding themselves and Henrietta being able to unravel the mystery that has haunted Annie’s life. Enjoyed the story coming together from both their perspectives and having a conclusion that solved the story and its outcome. Three great if unconventional women characters, all so convincingly written you cared about them. This is a lovely read, not too taxing but satisfying in a way that only happens if the author gets us to care about her characters” Zudem hat mir gefallen, dass es sich zwischenzeitlich anfühlte, als würde ich dazu noch einen Krimi lesen, was sicherlich für den Spannungsteil sorgte. ⁣ The damage that David Petraeus did - and continues to do through the fading gasps of his cult of followers who remain in uniform - I think will be calculated heavily in the years to come. Linda Robinson’s book was written when Petraeus was the “in” guy. He wasn’t a free thinker. He was (and is) a fraud. An ultimately hopeful book, encouraging us to face our past and be able to move forward and enjoy our lives without regrets. You’ll find yourself rooting for these characters and falling a little bit in love with them.” About the authorKalaya…. I want more of her. She have an aura of invincibility around her ? And I really wish to see her friendship with Iris ! Humane yet often horrifying, Tell Me How It Ends offers a compelling, intimate look at a continuing crisis-and its ongoing cost in an age of increasing urgency.” -Jeremy Garber, Powell’s Books In perhaps the most important book of 2017, Luiselli tells the story of her time volunteering as an interpreter for undocumented children fleeing violence in Central and South America seeking residency in the United States. Luiselli tries to change the way we talk about immigration, especially from our Southern neighbors, by exploring our complicity in the crises that turned these people into refugees and reminding us that quite often, when we’re talking about ‘illegal aliens’ and ‘undocumented immigrants,’ or whatever other term someone might try to scare us with, we’re talking about children.” —Writer’s Bone

Mexico-born author Valeria Luiselli has written a slim and moving book on her time working as an interpreter for child refugees making their cases, in court, to remain in the United States. The book, Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions, both broadens our understanding of these children and narrows in on our contradictory reception of them. Luiselli . . . interrogates the American conscience as she questions these children. In doing so, she guides us towards, as she puts it, ‘understanding the unthinkable.’” —The Nation She turns out to have had a vibrant younger sister who vanished on 21 December 1974, aged 18. A pile of Kath’s clothes left beside the Grand Union Canal led police to conclude she’d drowned herself. Afterwards, Annie fell into the grip of an abusive husband, whose subsequent death she’s cagey about.Tell Me How It Ends is a book of staggering emotional power and an incitement to deep shame.” —Harper’s Luiselli’s so-called essay is more than a memoir; it’s more than a report on an emergency, though it fulfills that role ably as well. In attempting to thread its way through the incoherence of both the refugee children’s traumatic journeys and the U.S. immigration system as a whole, Tell Me How It Ends reveals, ultimately, the burdens of narrative coherence.” —Carolina Quarterly Tell Me How It Ends’ is all the more moving because Luiselli is so honest about the difficulties of writing these stories . . . What does activist writing, writing that wants to make a real difference, look like?” —The New Yorker